Monday

We can’t stop hurricanes and nor’easters, but we can marshal human ingenuity and commitment to mitigate their effects. In the enlightening exhibit “NatureStructure,” design and engineering projects that work in harmony with nature show the potential to protect coasts and cities, as well as marine and land wildlife.

“This exhibit has a mission to let people know there is a different way to go about things,” said curator and urban strategist Scott Burnham, who premiers it in the BSA Space gallery at the Society of Boston Architects on Atlantic Wharf. “It’s deeply inspiring to see all these teams of people who said, ‘We need to do something and are stepping up to do so. They’re trying to repair the damage and go forward in a new way.”

For decades, people designed buildings and cities to master, block out, or battle nature, he said. They have barricaded cities and coasts with sea walls, filled in wetlands, and built structures that divide migration routes. As larger floods and rising sea levels have made this approach dangerous, designers and engineers have started to learn from The Netherlands, Australia and Scandinavia. In Norway, for example, there is a phrase that translates into “To play on the same team as nature,” and in The Netherlands it’s called “Building with nature.”

The approach is far more than designing buildings with solar panels to get energy from the sun or roof gardens to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Through photographs, design models, graphics, video and text, “NatureStructure” offers clear illustrations of the innovative projects under way or in planning that promote marine and wildlife, clean the air and protect against flooding. It’s easy to imagine how some could be adapted for Boston, the South Shore, Cape Cod and the Islands.

Although nearly all the projects are from outside the United States, several local ones promote the growth of oysters. Oysters are not just a food source and a livelihood, but masses of oysters reduce the destructive power of waves, Burnham said.

“The effects of Hurricane Sandy would have been less severe if the Hudson River estuary was covered with oyster beds as it was 100 years ago,” said Burnham, who is based in Boston, and whose exhibits and lectures have sparked urban design and sustainability initiatives in more than a dozen cities. “By restoring the oysters, we can buffer the damage.”

As one project to promote oysters, The Protoreef by Blue W Labs in Wellfleet is a 3-D printed “reef restoration structure” that looks like a playground maze, where oysters and other marine life attach themselves. Similarly, Oyster Reef Balls, nutrient packed concrete balls pocked with round openings, are being used to restore reefs in the Nantucket Watershed Project. And recently, as shown in a video, Nantucket natural resource officials and volunteers dropped 100,000 pounds of oyster shells on the ocean floor, collected from the island’s restaurants, where they will attract and promote the growth of oysters.

In Australia, the Reef Design Lab is fostering marine life by attaching “fish apartments” and “habitat panels” to the concrete water level supporting wall of the Sydney Opera House and to rocky sea walls, providing a place where marine life can nest, dwell and hide from predators.

Other projects make use of existing structures, such as bridges and hard surfaces to protect migration paths, clean the air and absorb excess storm water.

Attached to the side of a highway overpass in Geneva, for example, a system of tubes, pumps and solar panels contains algae that absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen; a similar algae structure helps clean the air on rooftops. Floating “ecosystems” developed by Biomatrix Water of Scotland restore the riverbank plant life destroyed by development, acting as floating water treatment plants.

Public squares and walkways have a variety of underneath systems to store storm water and reduce flooding. One of the most adventurous ideas, not yet built, is the Pop-Up parking garage designed by Denmark’s Third Nature that rises as it absorbs rainwater overflow.

“Water is as strong as steel when compacted, so it can push up what’s floating above it,” Burnham said.

Vegetation bridges allow migrating wildlife to cross highways without being run over, and roosting areas have been built into a bridge on a bat migration route in The Netherlands. To create more opportunities for bees to pollinate, Best Bees of Boston has precisely mapped bee behavior to see where they gather nectar and recommended specific plantings of flowers based on that.

Some approaches are likely to save money, such as “phytoremediation” at industrial waste sites. Here, plants are used to remove, degrade or contain soil contaminants, reducing the cost of digging up and transporting the soil elsewhere.

One of the most interesting and relevant coastal restoration projects is the Delfland Sand Motor in The Netherlands. Based on a study of coastal tides, currents and winds, restorationists selected the optimum site to dump sand on the severely eroded coast. As revealed in photographs and a video, the 21 million cubic meters of sand moved over four years to expand the coast substantially.

“Every coastal area is dealing with erosion,” Burnham said. “People try to bring in sand, but that gets washed away too. This project figured out how to bring it sand that not only lasts, but builds up the coast.”

As he anticipates future development in Boston’s Seaport area, Burnham said he hopes planners will take a look at the projects on view in the exhibit.

“I hope I have a lot of meetings and coffees to talk about the ideas in these projects,” he said. “Then I won’t have to cross the ocean every time someone wants to have a discussion.”

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